CALGARY — A mega mall just north of Calgary will house more than 500 retail stores, services and restaurants.

The New Horizon Mall is a unique, traditional Asian shopping centre concept with modern architecture where condo spaces in the centre will be for sale to retailers or investors as opposed to the traditional model of leasing. It is located on the east side of the Queen Elizabeth 2 Highway, just north of the Calgary International Airport and just south of the CrossIron Mills shopping centre.

Eli Swirsky, president of The Torgan Group which is developing the project with The MPI Property Group, said construction is expected to start in late 2014 with completion in late 2016.

Total square footage is about 280,000 square feet with underground parking. He said about 400 locations will be on the ground floor with about another 100 on a second level.

There are also two entertainment venues — a main stage on the lower level and a traditional Chinese stage on the upper level.

Future plans call for a hotel and a supermarket on the site.

“Calgary is the place to be for anything. It’s a leader in the nation for retail sales, growth, disposable income. It’s a very attractive place to invest both as a developer and for merchants to run businesses because the vacancy rate is so low,” said Swirsky. “Calgary is attractive on the macro level.

“We developed a similar type of mall in north Toronto, in Markham, in 1993 and the biggest issue we had to deal with is access and traffic issues ... Being right on Highway 2 (for New Horizon Mall), makes it very attractive from that point of view.”

Sales for the project will be officially launched October 26-27 in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Toronto. The mall will be home to fashion, health and beauty services, giftware, electronics, food and entertainment. The open concept style has spaces ranging from 285 square feet to 855 square feet with prices starting at $169,800. There’s also more than 320 square feet of glass per store.

“The New Horizon project will be shadow-anchored by CrossIron Mills and will be well situated to capitalize on traffic generated by the Mills centre that is now a major regional draw,” said Michael Kehoe, an Alberta-based retail specialist with Fairfield Commercial Real Estate in Calgary. “New Horizon is sure to become a destination for their target ethnic group and others as the appeal of themed specialty retail centres continue to grow across North America.”

David Kalinchuk, economic development manager with Rocky View County, said it has been working with this group for about a year on the project.

“Everything’s coming together. It’s a great project. It’s got a really unique retail offering,” he said. “Architecturally, they’ve really put a lot of thought into the landmark, gateway kind of appeal of this particular development, not unlike other developments in that area that are absolutely world-class.

“So you add new offerings to that area and it becomes a bit of a retail cluster. That’s very positive. We’re seeing lots of interest in the whole Balzac area. Towards Highway 2, we’re seeing more of that kind of retail and hotel offerings.”

Rob Walker, senior vice-president/partner of Colliers International in Calgary, said the condo retail concept works well in the Asian community “because that’s what they’re used to overseas.”

“Here it’s something relatively new,” he said.

“Usually ethnic-oriented malls are located within the area that the customers are living in. This is not. This is catering after feeding off Highway 2 and CrossIron Mills. So in that respect it’s different than a lot of the other ones we’ve seen.”

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